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L O N D O N @ G A G O S I A N . C O M W W W . G A G O S I A N . C O M
13 June 2014



PRESS RELEASE
GAGOSIAN GALLERY
6-24 BRITANNIA STREET T. 020.7841.9960
LONDON WC1X 9JD F. 020.7841.9961
GALLERY HOURS: TueSat: 10:00am6:00pm



JENNY SAVILLE: Oxyrhynchus

Friday, 13 JuneSaturday, 26 July 2014
Opening reception: Thursday, June 12th, from 6:00 to 8:00 pm


Gagosian is pleased to present the first-ever solo exhibition of Jenny Savilles paintings in London.

Captivated by the endless aesthetic and formal possibilities of the materiality of the human body,
Saville makes a highly sensuous and tactile impression of surface and mass in her monumental oil
paintings. Subjects are imbued with a sculptural yet elusive dimensionality that verges on the
abstract. In recent paintings, she renews her enduring figurative investigations by depicting bodies
embracing and intertwined.

Several new works are inspired by the ancient Egyptian rubbish dump at Oxyrhynchus, one of the
most important archeological sites ever discovered. Heaps of discarded documents and literature,
incredibly preserved in the areas dry climate, are now invaluable; fragments of ancient Greek
texts such as Euclids Elements and the poems of Sappho are among the excavated papyri. Saville
alludes to this history through a deep layering of paired subjects: faces, torsos, and limbs overlap
with shadows and reflections, palimpsests of living bodies and ancestral apparitions. Silhouettes
drawn in charcoal through the surfaces of oil paint underscore the motion of the central embracing
figures, while evoking the timeless human process of sketching. These intermediate studies echo
the shifting status of the unearthed papersonce discarded, now treasured.

Time is further compressed by Saville's adaptation of various historical approaches to portraiture,
from De Koonings fluid abstractions of the female figure; to the almost combined couples of
Picassos late paintings and Japanese Shunga prints; to Titians placement of subjects within
dramatic perspectival landscapes, exemplified by Nymph and Shepherd (c. 157075). Savilles own
figures merge ethereally with settings that have been loosely appropriated from photographs and
evoke the backdrops of Renaissance paintings.

Paintings on paper distill this subtle figuration into focused portraits, some taking several years to
complete. Study for Shadow Head (200714) reveals the tension between the subjects features
and piercing gaze and the reality of the painting itself as a surface of thick, gestural brushstrokes.
In Generation (201214), multiple impressions of each figure are drawn and painted to create
studies in simultaneity; the relationship between mother and child is conveyed in a series of
dynamic poses that move beyond formal composition and iconographic order into the realm of
metaphysics.

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A fully illustrated catalogue with an essay by John Elderfield is forthcoming.

Jenny Saville was born in Cambridge, England in 1970. She studied at the Glasgow School of Art.
Solo museum exhibitions include Museo dArte Contemporanea, Rome (2005); Norton Museum of
Art, West Palm Beach, Florida (2012); and Modern Art Oxford (2012). Her work was included in
Sensation: Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collection, Royal Academy of Arts, London
(1997, traveled to Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin; and Brooklyn Museum of Art (199899); The Nude
in 20th Century Art, Kunsthalle Emden, Germany (2002, traveled to Arken Museum of Modern
Art, Copenhagen, through 2003); Painting, Museo Correr, 50th Biennale di Venezia (2003); Paint
Made Flesh, Frist Center for the Arts, Nashville (2009, traveled to Phillips Collection, Washington,
D.C.; and Memorial Art Gallery, University of Rochester, New York, through 2010); and Eroi,
Galleria dArte Moderna, Torino, Italy (2011).

Egon Schiele/Jenny Saville opens at Kunsthaus Zrich on October 10, 2014.

For further inquiries please contact the gallery at london@gagosian.com or at +44.207.841.9960.
All images are subject to copyright. Gallery approval must be granted prior to reproduction.

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Gagosian Gallery was established in 1980 by Larry Gagosian.